Revenge, Revisit, or Reboot?

[verbosity]

I am GMing a campaign that purposely headed into some very open ended territory. Depending on the actions of the players it could take many vastly different directions. I don't want to bias you, so I'll keep my ideas to myself so far.

 

The plot is that all the problems on earth that we hear about in the news (cancer, acid rain, global warming, loss of fresh water, etc.) are really caused by the release of nuclear radiation from the tests our governments have done and the two bombs in WWII. The govt didn't want to frighten us so they attributed the problems to the causes with which we are familiar and which we felt we could solve.

 

Over the last 50 years, US govt cooked up a secret program to build super people (the PCs) hardy enough to survive a 300 year near-light-speed ride to Seres, the closest planet that might be survivable by the PCs. The characters are currently one light-year from that planet and have been awakened from crio-sleep early by Samantha, the slef-aware ship computer (who has had 300 years to decide her programmers were immoral), and told the classified info that the PCs are really "hosts" for the personalities of 10 world leaders / figures each. The world leaders are planning to have the ship computer implant their cognizances into the offspring of the characters after the PCs procreate, which will kill the characters and the cognizances of their kids. They are now deciding what to do.

 

Their notable powers are:

- Time travel up to about 1000 years

- Teleporting to a familiar location, no distance restraints, once a month

 

I am watching for them to head back to earth and see what state it is in (I haven't decided yet). I am also watching for them to time travel back to the 1940's and discourage Einstein or the governments with their story. Maybe they will try to make the US govt people pay by time travelling back to punish them for forcing the PC to be "hosts". Or maybe they'll just move on to Seres and see what's there. So what's there? And can you think of any more monkey wrenches to throw in?

 

Any ideas for directions would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks for the creativity,

David

[Herolover]

Re: Revenge, Revisit, or Reboot?

 

Well....it really comes down to what kind of campaign do you and your players want to play?

 

They could teleport back to earth in their present time. This could then lead to a Galactic Age Champions campaign as they batle the present villians in the universe.

 

They could, as you suggest, travel back to Einstien and convince him and the US Government to to develope the atomic bomb. I could see the US Gov saying that, "Hey then we need you to stay help us against the Germans." This I could see turning into a Golden Age Champions campaign.

 

Then there is the planet they are heading for and that could be literally anything.

 

They could stay in the ship and use it as a wondering base creating a sort of Galactic Supers game.

 

The one problem I see is the powers that you have allowed your characters to have. What keeps them from time travelling back and forth? Teleport anywhere means that you could end up running all of the above.

 

Personally I would talk to my players see what they want to run and manuever the campaign that way. If you just decide the players might not go along with it and do something to prevent it, by accident or on purpose.